The Science Museum

Yesterday was a cold, dreary day in Houston, so the boys and I decided to bundle up and head to the science museum. We hadn't been there in over a month and the boys needed to get their dinosaur and bug fix!

Oh, and pirates too! Did you know there are pirates at the HMNS? The museum has a pirate exhibit on display currently, so there are several of the rascals stationed throughout the museum. The boys thought it was great! We didn't actually see the exhibit on this visit; we really need to wait for Daddy to join us for that! But the boys had fun nevertheless.

There was a cannon that the boys had to investigate.

Henry, you're on the wrong side of the cannon!

What a perfect morning with my little adventurers!

Jack-in-the-Box

I had a two boxes laying around the living room for a couple of days.

The boys could not resist climbing in together.

They decided to play Jack-in-the box.

They crouched down low in the box and then popped up and yelled, "Jack-in-the box!"

And they did this over and over again.

Boxes make the best toys, don't they?

The Letter D

This week was one of those insanely crazy weeks at our house, so our letter D activities were slightly curtailed. We chose to focus on ducks, dinosaurs and dirt and started out by making D ducks. The boys loved gluing on the feathers and both chose to make very colorful ducks!

I had planned on taking the boys to the duck pond, but our field trip was rained out. We made due with reading our favorite duck books by Tad Hills, Jez Alborough and Doreen Cronin. Will's favorites are Duck & Goose and Duck, Duck, Goose by Tad Hills, but Henry loves the silly antics of the duck in Duck in the Truck and other duck stories by Jez Alborough. The science museum had a special "Dino Days" festival last Saturday that had been on my calendar for months. The boys were so excited to go meet Buddy from Dinosaur Train and explore their favorite museum, but Henry had a croupy cough Friday night, so we opted not to share our germs with the rest of the world. We read lots and lots of dinosaur books instead. We have many many dinosaur books at home, but the boys' absolute favorite is Dinosaurumpus by Tony Mitton. We have read this book so many times that every person in our house (including Henry) has it memorized!

We also made a lowercase d into a door and tucked a dinosaur sticker inside so that when you open the door, you see the dinosaurs.

Cute, right?

Next we got out the moon sand kit we got for Will's birthday. The boys loved hiding the little dinosaur fossils in the sand in the mold and then digging them out, just like real paleontologists do.
Digging for dinosaurs in dirt tied in perfectly with our dirt investigation. We checked out a couple of books from the library (Dirt: The Scoop on Soil by Natalie Rosinsky and Jump into Science: Dirt by Steve Tomecek are good for preschoolers) and one afternoon, I set out five cups full of different soils. The boys touched gravel, sand, clay, potting soil and mulch and Will did a pretty good job describing the different textures. Next up, Will has asked to dig up some dirt to search for earthworms! I think we'll try that next week.
For our "cooking" project this week, we made dirt out of chocolate pudding and crushed chocolate cookies. The boys loved crushing the cookies with their little hammer.

We added gummy worms for fun.

The boys thought eating dirt was the best treat ever!

Even though we didn't get to all the field trips I had planned, the boys had a great time exploring dinosaurs, dirt and ducks. I can tell already that our letter projects are making a huge difference for both boys. Henry loves the alphabet and talks about everything we've done so far and what words start with the letters we've covered. Will also loves to tell everyone about all our projects and investigations. Best of all, we're all having fun with it!

A Stroll

The other day, we took a walk to the park,

with the boys riding up high on shoulders,

taking full advantage of ourbeautiful fall weather.

The Letter C

C is for colds and croupy coughs and feeling crummy! We were stuck inside with sick kiddos this week, so we didn't do as much as normal, but we still had fun reading and learning about carrots, clouds and cookies!

We started the week by reading carrot books (our favorites are Carrot Soup by John Segal and Muncha! Muncha! Muncha! by Candace Fleming). The boys made a collage carrot C.

So cute!

Will is still loving the addition sheets that I made, so he asked to do some cereal addition with big numbers.On Tuesday afternoon, we ventured outside to study clouds. Will has been so curious about clouds lately, so we went out to look at the sky and make some observations. It was a good day to look at clouds because it rained the night before. We observed and discussed what kinds of clouds we saw and what that meant, and then we read some cloud books. Our favorites are Clouds by Anne Rockwell, It Looked Like Spilt Milk by Charles G. Shaw, and Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs by Judi Barrett.
Inside the boys made puffy cumulus clouds out of cotton balls and I turned on "Behind the Clouds" by Brad Paisley.
Will didn't feel like doing a whole lot this week, but he did enjoy working in a tracing/Kindergarten prep book I got him over the summer. We stayed home Wednesday morning, and by then we had been stuck at home for three days, so I got out the ingredients for chocolate chip cookies. This would cheer up anyone!
The boys are such good helpers. Can you see that we made some of our cookies into the letter C?

Waiting patiently for our cookies to bake. Henry is pointing at the one he wants.
The best part is eating the yummy cookies!

We also watched a YouTube clip of Cookie Monster's "C is for Cookies," which Will loves. He has been singing it over and over and going through the entire alphabet. Henry's favorite cookie book is Mmm, Cookies! by Robert Munsch. Perhaps he likes it so much because it combines two of his loves: Play-Doh and cookies!

After making cookies, Will requested that I turn on our alphabet CD. I made this CD over a year ago for Will's little friend Steven's third birthday. Steven was obsessed with the alphabet, so I thought it would be a fun gift to give him an CD full of alphabet songs. We never listened to it much at home until recently. The boys love it and sing along to all the songs. The songs are pretty fun. I have to give props to "Abby's Alphabet Soup" by Ralph's World because he gets the sounds all right! So often, kids are incorrectly taught that R makes the "er" sound and that L makes the "ul" sound and that's a huge pet peeve of mine. Ralph gets it spot on in his song and he also includes both sounds, if a letter makes more than one sound. I love it!
We loved our letter C activities, but we're ready to say goodbye to those colds, croupy coughs, and crummy feelings!

Balloon Pups

I have the best friends and neighbors. When my friend Suzanne heard that Will was sick this week, she immediately emailed to ask if she could do anything to help. The next day, she and her daughter came up the street with two huge balloon animals that she had made!

I cannot tell you how much this Pluto cheered Will up! He was so excited and plays with it every day. The boys got balloon doggies at our Fall Festival last weekend, but those popped almost immediately. Suzanne's are holding up quite well and are endlessly amusing for our little guys. (The little yellow balloon in the bottom of this picture is all that's left of Will's first dog!)

Thanks, Suzanne!

Goofy

Henry was grinning away at Daddy the other morning at breakfast. By the time I got my camera out to capture his sweet smiles, he turned goofy on me. Here are some of the many faces of my Henry: And of course Will had to join the goofy face party too!
I love these sweet, goofy boys!